Jake's Thing [antikvár]

I This Is It'When did you first notice something was wrong?''Well, notice, it must be five or six weeks, I could give you the date if I had to. But then as soon as I did notice I reaUzed something had been wrong much further back than that.''How much further back?''Oh A year? Year and a half?''About the time your other trouble started to become acute, in fact.''Yes. There must be a link.'By way of answer the doctor gave a quiet sigh. His patient, a round-faced bespectacled man called Jake Richardson, was left to wonder whether this meant that the link was all too grimly real, that only a fool would suppose one existed or that the task of explanation seemed altogether daunting. Jake didn't wonder for long. To have gone on doing so would have been to concede the doctor (Curnow by name) too much importance. When asked why he persistently went to a man he had so little time for, Jake would say that disliking your GP was a good insurance against getting dependent on him.Now Dr Curnow shook his head a few times and swallowed. In the end he said, 'There's nothing I can do for you.''Oh, but surely you must have a -''No. The only way is for me to send you to someone.''That was rather what I -''Excuse me a second, would you please?'Funny how it's got ruder to say please than not, Jake thought to himself as the doctor began to turn slowly